Green is Good

I have always considered green to be the color of God. I’m not talking about some particular vision of God, but my sense of the divine All That Is. It seems to me, like Darwin said about beetles, that God really must favor green. Science calls it chlorophyll but whatever the biological dynamics involved the result is great swathes of green, immense canopies of green, a blue-green incandescence of sea, and a planet like a great blue-green marble with soft swirling swatches of white.

I think that might be why I love stones like chrysacolla or the wonderful mix of malachite and lapis lazuli. I have collected a particularly lovely couple of pieces of turquoise, probably dyed, that are gorgeous grass green. Grass green that reminds me of Northern California in the spring when the winter rains have soaked the soil and the spring sun awakens new life. It’s a truly amazing green that jumps to your eyes with electric vitality. Or that soft emerald carpet of Irish green grass in Eire that is the result of a wet mild climate. Or that tired eluvial green of dry peaks and ridges, or the dark green of pine, or the beautiful alluvial green of rivers and valleys. Think of the Nile with the banks rich with life, reeds and papyrus. I would love to see the green of a tropical rainforest for myself. That’s one green I have never seen in person.

Green is the color of life. I think of that every time I see a little seed burst forth from the dark loamy earth, just two delicate cotyledons breaking free on their tender stem. Green is the color of many of my favorite foods.

Green is good.